Jury: Threat On Wife Was Not Extortion

TITUSVILLE — In less than an hour Tuesday, a six-man jury acquitted a 25-year-old Mims man of extortion but found him guilty of making obscene and harassing phone calls.

The issue was whether Ron W. King intended to extort money from Walter Kollosch of Titusville or whether, as his attorney claimed, King was using ''mere words to put the family in fear.''

Attorney Arthur Haft described the incident as a ''domestic dispute that just blew up'' after Kollosch's daughter, Arlene, broke off a relationship with King. Testimony revealed that King and the Kolloschs had several confrontations about Arlene during the last four years while talking on Citizen's Band radios, on the telephone and in the Miracle City Mall parking lot in Titusville.

King was arrested and charged with extortion on April 5 after calling the Kolloschs' home on Abbott Avenue, demanding Kollosch pay him $5,000 or he would kill Kollosch's wife. He was tried on the charge earlier this month but the jury was deadlocked on the verdict.

Making obscene or harassing calls is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.

During the second day of the trial on Tuesday, King testified that he was ''sorry about the phone call to the Kollosch family. It was downright dirty. I never intended to get no money -- he baited me and I fell for it.''

Kollosch testified Monday that King began making obscene calls and statements about his family in l981. He forced King to stop the calls in l982 but they began again last spring. Kollosch, 58, and his son-in-law, Don McLean, confronted King at the mall on two different occasions and demanded he stop the obscene statements.

Those two disputes provoked King to make the call on March 30 and say to Kollosch, ''Give me $5,000 by Tuesday or your wife's dead,'' King said.

After hearing the verdict, Kollosch said, ''All the pain he's caused us and all he gets is a misdemeanor. I don't understand it.''